The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is a priest of the Church of England and former Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. He has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal.

The Archbishop of Canterbury makes excuses for a criminal mob while turning his disapproval on the forces of law and order

In an uncertain world, we long for one or two things, at least, to be entirely predictable. Thankfully, we can rely on the Archbishop of Canterbury to be one of these things. He has just given us his views on the causes of the summer riots in towns and cities up and down the country.

Dr Rowan Williams blames "massive economic hopelessness" among the rioters. Against this assertion, we need to understand that those who rioted were a very small minority of the youthful poor. So when the Archbishop cites material causes in order to account for riotous behaviour, he thereby cast a slur on the overwhelming majority of the poor who did not riot.

He adds: "Too many of these young people assume they are not going to have any ordinary, human, respectful relationships with adults – especially those in authority, the police above all.”

So the rioters don’t like the police much? Wow! That does come as a revelation. Violent lawbreakers resent the forces of law and order – whatever next? There is more of this sort of wisdom:

“Too many of them inhabit a world in which the obsession with 'good' clothes and accessories – against a backdrop of economic insecurity or simple privation – creates a feverish atmosphere where status falls and rises as suddenly and destructively as a currency market."

Leave aside for a moment the fact that many of those who rioted appeared already to possess an abundance of “accessories” – if not quite so many good clothes – the fact is that most ordinary folk inhabit this ultra-materialistic and covetous world, and yet they do not take violently to the streets to commit opportunist theft.

Since the Church’s slanted Left-wing report Faith in the City back in the 1980s, we have got used to seeing the senior clergy make the same sorts of political responses to social issues:

"We have to persuade them, simply, that we as government and civil society alike will be putting some intelligence and skill into giving them the stake they do not have.”

But political policies should be decided by politicians. The Church’s responsibility is to provide moral guidance. Of course, as the Archbishop rightly says: "Demonising volatile and destructive young people doesn't help; criminalising them wholesale reinforces the problem.”

I didn’t notice any such “demonising”, but I did notice that far from being criminalised “wholesale”, those accused were brought to trial individually to acknowledge responsibility for their own behaviour and not to be made to account for the whole violent and thieving mob.

“We have the tools for something other than vindictive or exemplary penalties," adds the Archbishop.

It seems, by this saying, that, while Dr Williams makes every attempt to exculpate the criminal mob by the invocation of generalised economic causation, he turns his disapproval on those whose job it is to uphold the law. Are our magistrates and judges, public servants, really so “vindictive”?

It is noteworthy, but not at all surprising that the Archbishop does not touch on one plain cause of the riots: and that was the reluctance of the police, immediately following the initial outbreak in Tottenham, to prevent the looters from going about their unlawful business. And we understand the police’s institutionalised reticence. Since the Brixton and Toxteth riots of 1981, they have been instructed to tread very softly when dealing with “communities”.